Unforgettable (17 page)

People nearby were staring, and she’d blushed beet-red. Her memory told her they were smiljng, but what lingered was her guilt for embarrassing her mother. Had that been the moment her spirit first chilled? She had certainly never sung in public that way again, not until she’d joined the choir and been encouraged by Mr. Barnwell, the music teacher.

Bruce hadn’t lasted long. He’d been too nice.

” ‘The earth says hello,’ ” she sang softly.

A quiet ripple in the water told her someone had joined her. Cinny’s sandals dangled from her fingers, too.

“A penny,” she said.

“Just thinking about the past.” Rett met Cinny’s gaze as she found a wistful smile. “There’s nothing like summer here.”

Cinny swatted a mosquito. “Right now it’s winter in Australia. That just fascinates me. That I could get on a plane and tomorrow walk into a snowstorm.”

Rett went back to studying the pattern of light on the water. “Life can be like that without getting on a plane. I was standing here thinking about how warm and beautiful summer was when I remembered something cold.”

“Not about me, I hope.”

“No, nothing to do with you.”

“How unflattering.”

Rett glanced at Cinny again. Cinny had a teasing air, but her eyes were too serious. “I hope you’re just joking.”

“I wish I was.”

“Cinny—”

Cinny’s lips had a bitter twist. “I know. You were very plain. I’ve thought about little else since Friday night. I can’t even look at Sam. I can’t let him touch me.”

“Cinny—”

“That’s just the God’s honest truth. I wish it weren’t, damn it all.”

“You don’t have to be honest with me.”

“You want me to lie to you?”

“No! I mean, I’m not the one who matters. You need to be honest with yourself.”

Cinny’s voice was choked, but with what emotion Rett couldn’t discern. “I thought I was. For the past twenty-odd years I’ve been honest. I want women and I don’t want the stigma of being a lesbian. Maybe that’s not politically correct, but that’s how I’ve always felt.”

Rett didn’t want to have this conversation again. What did Cinny expect her to say? “I’m not going to deny there’s a stigma. It’s hard enough to handle without generating homophobia from your own fears.”

“This isn’t all in my head!”

“Don’t you think I know that? I was the one they called lesbo, remember? I just found a way to stare them down. A way to say, ‘So what.’ Jerry Knudsen called me that and tried to feel me up. I kneed him in the nuts so hard his whole family felt it. I don’t know where I found the strength for it when everything else they called me hurt so much.” The memory of Jerry Knudsen gasping for breath on the ground turned her frown into a smile. Thereafter he’d stuck with calling her names from a safe distance.

Cinny drew in a long, shaky breath. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I was okay until I saw you. I was managing. I want you so much I can’t think,” she whispered. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Rett knew that ache, and part of her wanted to comfort Cinny, but she knew it would be unwise to touch her. She had thought on the way to the reunion that she’d be happy if Cinny got just the tiniest taste of her own high-school medicine, but now it didn’t please her at all. “I’m sorry, really.” She could think of nothing else to say.

“So am I.” Cinny waded back to shore and ran over the grass, pausing in the trees to glance back briefly before slipping on her sandals to return to the picnic.

Poor Cinny, Rett thought. How do you take the cheerleader out of the all-American girl? She had not considered that Cinny had felt the weight of other people’s hopes and expectations and had never learned to put them in the perspective of her own happiness. Rett wished that she could make it easier, somehow, but only Cinny could decide what to do with the choices she’d made.

She waded along the shore for a few minutes, stopping to hold one foot after the other out of the water to feel the sand drip off. Mosquitoes only plagued her in the deepest shade, so she waded out to the sunshine. It took her a few minutes to realize that someone on the shore was keeping pace with her.

From the way her body tightened and her heart pounded, she knew who it was before she fully registered the small, dark-haired woman. They stared at each other over the strip of water separating them.

“Mind if I walk with you?” Angel balanced like a flamingo to unstrap first one sandal, then the other. She waded into the water and it seemed to Rett that the water glowed where it was lucky enough to embrace Angel’s calves.

“Not at all,” she said in a belated squawk.

They waded along the shore for several minutes, then Angel finally said, “I have a lot of flaws.”

Rett hadn’t known what to expect but it certainly hadn’t been that. “I don’t think I should agree or disagree.”

“Wise.” Angel stepped closer to shore to avoid a submerged branch. “For one thing, I’m a neat freak —unbelievably anal retentive. Felix Unger could take lessons from me.”

“That’s probably why you’re so successful in your career.”

“Yeah, well, I won’t argue with that. I hate things that don’t make sense and I’ll pick at them until they do. I like things tidy.” Angel stopped walking and Rett turned toward her. She wanted to step over the branch and get close enough to smell Angel’s hair and study the color of her eyes. “I keep thinking that life can be neat and clean.”

“It’s not, usually. There’s that old saying about doors closing so other ones can open, but usually the doors open before the others are closed.” Rett had no idea where this philosophical discussion might be leading.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you pick her or me. It’s not for me to force you to do anything.”

“You were right, though. I did have to know what I’d do if she — you know.” Rett was suddenly embarrassed, recalling the kiss that Angel had witnessed.

The words seemed to burst out of Angel. “I think we should slow down.”

“Slow what down?” Rett raised her arms in appeal. “Date less? Oh wait, we’ve never had a date, so we can’t do that. Besides—”

“You know what I mean.”

“Besides,” Rett continued, “nothing happened between Cinny and me. I mean, only a little bit happened.” She felt her cheeks reddening again. “I mean I said no.”

Angel blinked. “Why am I having a hard time believing that?”

Damn her, anyway, Rett thought. “That’s the second time you’ve thought I’m lying to you. I don’t know why you would think that—”

“Because I don’t know you—”

“Well, this slowing down thing is certainly going to change that.”

“You don’t have to shout!”

“What am I supposed to do? She’s a married woman and I don’t do that. What I felt for her, the leftover feelings, weren’t so strong that I forgot who I was. I’m not my mother and I won’t make her mistakes!”

Angel had obviously been going to retort something, but she closed her mouth and stared at Rett for a moment. “I didn’t mean to imply that.”

“I’ve never lied to you,” Rett said more quietly. She muttered, “The damned napkin fell in the gutter.”

Angel’s face crumpled into a grin. “Okay, I believe you.”

They walked again, this time close enough to hold hands if they’d tried. The water was over Angel’s knees in places.

“Your mother didn’t come today?”

“She doesn’t know I’m here,” Rett admitted.

“Oh.” Angel was obviously surprised but was trying to sound nonjudgmental.

“In all these years, I’ve never been back to see her.”

“I — I can’t even imagine … I mean, I knew from little things you said that you didn’t get along with her, but…”

“Twenty-three years of silence seems a bit extreme?” Rett knew how it looked. It did seem extreme. “We’ve exchanged Christmas cards every year. She’s never asked me to visit. I’ve never suggested it, either. First it was five years, then another five. I never missed her. I never had any feeling that she missed me.”

Angel didn’t ask, but the question trembled around them.

Rett answered it anyway. “I thought I didn’t come back because we never had any kind of mother-daughter love and I didn’t need to have anything to do with her.”

“What do you think now?”

Rett stopped walking and turned to look over the lake. She didn’t want Angel to see the tremor in her lips. “I’m frightened. I’m not sure why. I’ve been frightened all along and yet I thought I was fine. But the closer I come to seeing her the more terrified I feel.”

“What do you think is going to happen?” Angel’s tone was soothing but concerned.

“I think that I told myself she never loved me and I still don’t really believe it. I’m afraid I’ll find out for sure that she never did love me. That was why she treated me the way she did.”

“How was that?”

She liked that Angel didn’t automatically protest that of course her mother had loved her. The only time she’d tried to tell someone about it her confidant had immediately assumed that maternal love conquered all. She risked a glance over her shoulder. “Are you playing therapist?”

“I’m not very good at it. I’m too opinionated to keep my mouth shut. But if you don’t want to tell me, I won’t ask again. Really.”

“It’s okay.” She fixed her gaze on the distant shore, counting the cabins that lined the waterfront to distract her mind from the throat-choking tears that still threatened. “It could have been worse.”

“She didn’t — hurt you, did she?”

“Not physically,” Rett said quickly. “Unless you can call neglect harm. As soon as I could open a can I made my own meals. I washed my own clothes, changed the sheets on my own bed — that is, after I realized that people did such things on a regular basis. But that wasn’t — that only hurts a little. It did teach me to do for myself. It’s just that from the day I was born she did everything she could to remind me I was nothing, and that the world would never let me be more than nothing, that I was her daughter and I’d end up just like her.”

“None of that has come true.”

She couldn’t hold the tears back any longer, and she dashed them from her eyes. “Damn.” Her voice would be tight and high when she got together with the Wiffenpoofs. She forced herself to take two deep breaths, exhaling slowly. “It didn’t have to come true. For a lot of years I just accepted what life offered. I didn’t think I deserved more. I lost a lot of time. I didn’t think seeing her mattered, and it’s scary to realize that it does. I thought I had gotten over ” feeling like a failure.”

“I never realized. I’m sorry.”

Rett suddenly couldn’t take Angel’s sympathy. It wasn’t what she wanted from Angel. “The Wiffenpoofs are going to do a little rehearsing — they’ve probably already started.” She turned back the way they’d come, surprised to see that it was so far to the trees.

“It’s quicker on the path,” Angel said. She sloshed to shore and headed for a barely discernible footpath into the pines.  

Rett followed slowly, stopping to slip into her sandals once they reached the edge of the grass. Angel was some distance ahead of her, but she stopped when she realized Rett wasn’t following.

“About this slowing-down thing,” Rett said with most of her composure returned. “What exactly does that mean?”

Angel watched Rett’s approach and bit her lower lip. “This is a difficult week. We’re not ourselves. I don’t think we should base anything on this week. I was wrong to try to put strings on you. You shouldn’t feel —”

“What if I like those strings?”

Angel stared at her feet and shook her head. “I just don’t think we can — a lot can happen.”

“Is there someone else?”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, but—”

“Then what?”

Angel backed up a step. “You’ll kiss me and it’ll be perfect, that’s what.”

“That’s a problem?” Rett thirsted for kisses now.

“Yes, yes it is.” Angel’s arms were dusted with gooseflesh.

“You’re going to have to share your hypothesis, Doctor Martinetta, because I’m confused by that statement.” Rett made up the distance Angel had backed away.

“Stop it,” she said, stepping back again.

“Stop what?” Rett kept closing the distance between them.

“Don’t tease me.”

“I don’t exactly have teasing on my mind.”

“I want to know the real Rett Jamison.”

Rett patted her stomach. “This is she.” 

“Not a holiday Rett Jamison.” Angel’s backward steps were halted by a tree.

“There is no such character. Christ, Angel, I don’t know what you expect to see. If you mean you want to wait until we’re back in L.A. and we can do the dating thing and decide if we can stand each other’s company outside of bed, then okay, we’ll wait.”

“That’s what I mean.” Angel was breathless. “I think it would be — wiser. I’m thinking too much about — about the girl I loved in high school. I want to get to know you as a grownup.”

“Then we’ll wait,” Rett said softly. “But don’t think I’m going to make it easy on you.” She stood close enough to Angel to smell her hair. It was just like she remembered.

“Stop that.” Angel cupped Rett’s jaw and drew her head down. “Just stop it.”

Even though Rett was prepared for the electric sensation of Angel’s lips on hers, it still surprised her. The flash of it raised hair on the back of her neck, and butterflies flitted in her stomach and places to the south. She pressed Angel against the tree and they kissed until Rett’s knees were weak and she felt deliriously dizzy.

“Is that how you wanted me to stop it?”

“Exactly how,” Angel breathed. Her tongue brushed Rett’s lower lip, then they were falling into each other again. Dappled water glittered behind Rett’s closed lids; her head spun as if she’d been in the sun too long. She clung to Angel with a gasp, thrilling to the heat of Angel’s fingers under her thin blouse.

A burst of guitar music not far away startled them apart. Rett swayed and Angel caught her hand to steady her. 

“I like slowing down,” Rett managed to say. “We’ll definitely have to wait for anything else until we get back to L.A., then,” she teased. She drew Angel’s fingertips to her lips.

“Yes, we’ll wait.” Angel untangled her fingers and slipped out from between Rett and the tree. She strode somewhat unsteadily toward the picnic.